


My Life as a Palimpsest

by illwynd



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Thor (Comics), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Breathplay, Choking, Dubious Consent, Feels, First Time, Gags, Heavy Angst, M/M, Non-Consensual Bondage, Sibling Incest, Size Kink, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-03-31 02:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3961201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story of Loki, and it starts in Vegas, when instead of getting a time-out from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Thor drags his bruised, beat-up brother off the street and into a nearby motel room. Things only get messier from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scriptio Inferior

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t read _Loki: Agent of Asgard_ #8-13, you will be wanting to do that before reading this. 
> 
> I also want to reiterate the warnings for rape and graphic violence, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part takes place around the time of Axis #6/L:AoA #8

_This is a story of Loki._

_It is at once the story of a god who died so that he might escape the chains of his fate, the innocent who was reborn in his place, and the echo of the old who plotted the innocent’s demise so as to steal back and sneak into a chance of a different future._

_It is the story of a god who found nonetheless that he was still tied to the same role, and slipped through the bindings of time to return and change the events of his own life._

_It is a story erased and scratched out and overwritten for different purposes and intentions, old markings bleeding into the new, past and future obscuring one another until it is no longer clear what was cause and what effect._

_And at this particular moment, it is the story of the former agent of Asgard as he faces the god of thunder upon the sun-baked pavements outside a Las Vegas casino, having just minutes ago found his brother within, not even cheating at the game before him but simply heedless, callous and destructive, taking what he wished by force._

_Our newly wrought hero finds this is not at all what he expected._

*

Ever since he got over the surprise and the sheer strangeness of it, Loki knew that the inversion was his big chance.

He had been looking for a way to change, and here he was—changed, completely different, with all the bad in him turned to goodness. From the start he had tried to envision how it would be, using his magic for the power of truth, using his cleverness in the service of virtue. But he had not envisioned finding Thor in opposite straits. He had not envisioned having to _fight_ him.

Loki dodged another blow from Thor’s fist and tried to think, lifting his hands in a gesture of peace.

“Please, Thor, calm down and let us talk about this, I’m only here to help you—”

Thor’s answer was a roar and another punch, which connected with Loki’s jaw before he could evade it.

“You foul little rat,” Thor yelled, striking him again on the temple despite Loki’s attempts to duck away, and then bringing a fist to his solar plexus, knocking the breath from him and shoving him back. “I do not need your _help_ —if that is what you call the miserable, sneaking connivance I have always received from you! Begone from my sight, or I will give you cause to regret it.”

As soon as Loki had gasped air back into his lungs and managed to straighten where he stood, he steeled himself. “No, brother,” he said firmly, teeth clenched. “You have never given up on me, so I won’t give up on you now that our fortunes are reversed.”

He caught the vicious narrowing of Thor’s eyes and knew that it presaged violence to come, but there was no way he could have prepared for the onslaught of Thor launching himself with a feral snarl and bowling them both over onto the hard, hot concrete. Loki struggled and tried at least to lift his hands to guard himself, though he was still determined not to actually fight, to show Thor he was in earnest by refusing to do him any harm to save himself.

(It was not lost on him that this might almost have been a scene from their past, only with roles reversed, though another little voice in his mind noted that this would not have been the former, evil Loki’s style at all. Straddling his enemy to hold him down and beat him senseless? Not until all else had failed, at least. This Loki, flailing and struggling futilely against his brother’s far greater bulk, tried not to hold the bluntness of the attack against him and also tried not to pay heed to the insults Thor snarled at him. It wasn’t Thor’s fault. It was the inversion spell, and he surely didn’t truly mean what he was saying.)

“You disgust me, Loki,” Thor growled as he struck again, his huge fist drawing back with a smear of red across the knuckles, his face twisted in loathing. “Pathetic, forever taunting me, and too craven to carry it through! Fight back, you weakling, if you are a man at all!”

Thor also surely didn’t truly mean what he was doing, and that was why Loki _wasn’t_ going to give up on him. He had to do the right thing, the _noble_ thing, because he was good now, even if Thor no longer was.

He blinked, dazed, and tried again, gasping out between wet lips, “I forgive you, brother, and I love you, no matter what you do.”  

Thor’s roar this time was one of frustration, and he grabbed Loki by the hair before dashing his head against the concrete, and then for a little while Loki knew no more.

*

When he came to, he was slung over Thor’s shoulder and being carried. The world, upside-down, bobbed with bright colors and glinting glass, the shimmer of desert heat and the subtle rippling of the muscles in Thor’s back as he shifted Loki’s weight in his grasp.

“Thor…”

“Shut up,” came the cold, hard reply.  

The swath of red cape whipped against Loki’s face in an apparent attempt to smother him, but Loki managed to shove it away again. “Where are… what are you...?”

This time Thor didn’t bother to reply except with a sharp jab of elbow that smacked against Loki’s already tender nose.

“Ouch,” he muttered. But it seemed he had no choice but dangle like a sack of flour and wait to find out what Thor meant to do to him. At least the storm of Thor’s violence seemed to have abated, thought Loki was not sure why.

It was one of the stranger experiences that Loki could remember, being carried upside down through a set of gilded doors, unable to do anything but watch and listen in confusion as Thor marched them up to a counter and demanded that he be directed to the nearest unoccupied private room.

When he caught the startled mortal attendants staring at him, Loki gave a little shrug of his head.

“My apologies, it seems my brother is not in a mood for compromise—oof!”

This last was Thor’s elbow again. Loki took the wiser course and shut up until the deadbolt turned with a thunk behind them.

*

“Take off your clothes and get on the bed,” Thor growled.

“Wh-what?” Loki stuttered.

True, it should have been the obvious conclusion when he realized that Thor was sequestering them in a hotel room, but Loki hadn’t actually believed in the obvious in this case, because it was impossible.

In the past few months—almost from the moment he’d aged himself out of adolescence—Loki had made a few playful, teasing advances toward Thor. The first time he’d done it, it had mostly been in jest, and it had been so much fun he’d had to do it again.

But he’d also done it because he’d never been able to admit it before, and even if Thor only blushed, not meeting his eyes, and asked if he had learned such perversity on the mortals’ internet, that was still a better reaction than nothing. Of course, they were brothers, and as far as Thor knew, Loki was a new and innocent version of his brother, which he would never corrupt. So it had never been more than a few joking innuendos that Thor tried to laugh off while Loki tried to pretend he hadn’t secretly been _hoping_.

So Loki’s brain skidded to a halt at the growled command, and then in moments it was racing again.

He was not averse to the idea. Not at all. But…

“Thor, no,” Loki said, pleading, as Thor advanced on him, danger in his eyes and barely subdued violence brimming in his form. “I… I hate that I’m saying this, but you’re not in your right mind, you really shouldn’t…”

Loki was good now, and he had to do the right thing. The noble thing. And stopping Thor from committing incest while in the grip of an inversion spell most likely qualified. 

But Thor didn’t seem to care about that.

“Take your clothes off or I rip them off you.”

Loki’s eyes flickered to the door behind him, and that was how the former agent of Asgard ended up squirming and struggling on his back on the bed as Thor made good on his threat, and the fact that Loki was wearing his armor made everything far more difficult.

“Thor, you will regret doing this later,” Loki gulped, wincing as a thick leather strap was snapped, surely leaving a welt on his skin. “You shouldn’t… you don’t really want to…”

Thor stopped what he was doing (which happened to be ripping down the seam of Loki’s shirt) and looked up at him, mouth a tense line. “I told you to shut up,” he said at last. “Your words do nothing but annoy me, as they have always done.”

And he made the order stick by twisting a piece of Loki’s shirt into a rope and then—

“No, wait!”

—shoving it into his mouth as he struggled, tying it around his head as a rough gag.

Thor finished his work by using the rest of Loki’s garments to tie him down to the bed, legs stretched out toward the foot and arms sprawled above his head.

Loki lay there blinking. That was that, and whatever Thor meant to do, Loki could no longer attempt to convince him to stop. It would undoubtedly be more enjoyable than having Thor trying to kill him. But maybe not by much.

For a moment Thor glared at him with bitter hatred and then stood up in full view to begin stripping himself naked.

“You say I am not in my right mind,” Thor said through gritted teeth, low and angry, as he unfastened his belt. “You accuse me thus when _you_ are what is wrong with me. I loathe you, I _despise_ you for how I have suffered on your account. But I am happily unworthy now, so I need suffer no longer.”

Thor was already bare-chested, his magnificent arms and shoulders draped in the red cape, which he kept on. But he pushed the tight black leather down past his hips with slow deliberateness. Bent as he peeled it down his thick-muscled thighs, showing off his power and his body, the perfection of every angle and every piece of skin. Casually, almost accidentally, he turned a quarter turn to give Loki a little glimpse of another perfect curve. Loki swallowed with difficulty, desire coursing through him, sparking the inevitable physical reaction of a twenty-year-old body in proximity to the perfection that was Thor.

Thor gave him a dismissive glance—or, rather, gave his growing erection one—and stepped out of his boots and shoved the little pile of leather to one side.

“Do you like what you see, little shadow?” he sneered as Loki continued to stare. “Long have you wanted me, even though we are kin.”

And if it weren’t for the gag, Loki—who currently could not lie—would have had to answer a very definite _yes_.

He had wanted Thor for as long as he could remember, since long before this lifetime.

He remembered being the old Loki—the former self whose existence had turned into a dank, malignant vessel of dim-lit memories in the back of his mind—and going to bed with everything from demons to beasts to Lorelei, liaisons of expedience or trickery or bargaining. Unimportant experiences that never made it past his loins, because they weren’t the one he most wanted, the only one he _desired_. The one who would never want him in return.

And this Loki—he had been with no one at all, really. He had been stuck with the body of a boy at first and now only barely past that, and though he’d had a few opportunities, he’d taken none of them. It had never felt right, the idea of sleeping with someone else when his dreams were filled with his brother (and he often woke up from those dreams with his underwear sticking embarrassingly to his skin. It was one of the problems of being this young.)

The scene before him now could have been one of those dreams, with Thor towering over him, a mighty tree where Loki was a sapling by comparison, the difference in their sizes—it had never seemed so much in the former Loki’s memories—making him ache.

Thor stood glaring down at his bound brother, brow furrowed, feet apart and massive arms folded across his chest, his great strength on display in every bunched muscle.

Loki had never seen his brother nude in this lifetime, his dreams fueled only by distant memories and the way Thor looked clothed. So it was completely beyond his control when his gaze caught on the little trail of gleaming golden hairs that began just below Thor’s navel, followed it down to where his cock hung dark and heavy over the full ruddy weight of his balls.

As Loki stared, it twitched and thickened a little more, the sight making a thrill of excitement tighten in his belly—which caused a rush of guilt.

He was the good one right now. He should not have been enjoying this. He ought only to have cared about saving Thor from himself, from acts that he would surely later regret. He should not have been almost painfully hard. But he was.

And Thor’s glare was hard upon him, looking as if he was trying to decide how to punish his bound and helpless brother.

“I despise you,” Thor rumbled again. “You are cruel and depraved and you have taken joy in taunting me with what I cannot have, tormenting me with your presence. But you will do so no longer.”

Then Thor clambered onto the bed between Loki’s spread legs, leaned forward, and took his brother’s cock in his mouth, and it was only the gag that muffled Loki’s shout.

Those dim, dank memories of past bedmates didn’t matter. In _this_ body, young and oversensitive, Loki had never had anyone’s mouth upon him, and the feeling of his brother’s tongue swirling around the head to wet it made his hips jolt upward in shock. In response Thor let out a growl deep in his throat and pinned Loki’s middle with both hands before taking even more into his mouth and sucking with angry fervor. Teeth scraped lightly over his shaft every few strokes, like a reminder of how vulnerable Loki was, at the mercy of his furious, powerful brother.

Loki stared down at the blond head bobbing over his lap, wide-eyed.

He was the victim here, wasn’t he? He was still bruised and bloodied from Thor’s fists, and he was tied to a bed so that he couldn’t escape, couldn’t struggle. He had been gagged so he couldn’t protest or try to talk his way out of this. He was the victim—no one could blame him if he simply lay back and let it happen, accepted the new sensations assaulting him, could they? He wasn’t responsible for this. He wasn’t at fault.

Even in the privacy of his own head, that lie itched.

He was the trickster, hardly unfamiliar with being caught and having to find a way to escape from much worse traps than this. If he gave in now, it would be because he’d barely tried to do the right thing, and _he_ would know even if no one else did.

He shut his eyes and tried to think, no matter how difficult it was with the delicious wet heat of Thor’s mouth on him.

 _Why_ was Thor doing this? He’d said it was something he’d already wanted, and that he was only acting on it because he was unworthy and no longer cared about being good, but he’d said lots of things that (Loki hoped) were lies. He’d said he’d never cared about his brother, and Loki knew that couldn’t be true. So it had to be that this was just the result of the inversion, changing him and twisting his desires. Making him want something evil, something against his true nature.

So it was Loki’s responsibility to find a way to get him to stop, to save him from himself. If he wanted to deserve any of the love Thor had ever given him, if he wanted Thor to trust him when all this was over, that is what Loki needed to do.

With his hands and mouth both tied, magic—to the limited extent he had it these days—was inaccessible to him. So he would have to find another way.

Before he could think of one, though, Thor pulled back and growled something unintelligible as he shoved himself off the bed with a spiteful glance over his shoulder.

Loki tried to feel relief rather than frustration as his saliva-wet cock was left to bob in the cool air while Thor disappeared down the small corridor that led to the bathroom. Whatever Thor was doing (and the muted clattering gave Loki little to guess with) it was a reprieve, and it gave Loki time to think of a way to wheedle Thor into not doing this.

Loki took a deep breath and released it again.

Undoubtedly Thor meant to fuck him. And as angry and vengeful as he was, it seemed unlikely that he would be particularly concerned with Loki’s comfort or any of the usual preparations. And that would be his chance. He could probably handle it—the size of Thor made a shiver trickle through him at the thought, but he was fairly sure he would be able to enjoy it anyway. But Thor didn’t know that. And if Loki was able to put on a show of sobbing and struggling like he was being killed when Thor first attempted to put his dick in him, and make Thor believe it—then maybe, just maybe, Thor would reconsider. Surely some small part of Thor’s remaining goodness that didn’t mind beating him senseless on the street would stop short of painfully raping an unwilling sibling.

It was the only lever Loki had to try to save Thor from himself, so he had to hope it would work.

Then he heard footsteps returning, and he looked up to see Thor standing there with smug triumph in his grin, and in his hand a pair of small, bright-colored packets, and Loki’s hope crumbled. Thor had somehow found lube, so he was doomed.

Loki shut his eyes for a moment. It was inevitable now, with no escape.

At any moment Thor would reach him and he would feel his brother’s big, thick fingers sliding into him, smearing lube across his hole and getting him ready to do to him what he had dreamed of since he was somebody else. Since before he had this body. Since he was a boy in Asgard watching his brother outshine the sun.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut until too long had passed and the touch he expected had not come. Instead when he opened his eyes it was to the strange sight of Thor standing at the foot of the bed, one hand wrenched around behind himself, brows scrunched in concentration.

If not for the gag, Loki’s mouth would have fallen open in surprise.

When he caught Loki staring, he scowled but didn’t stop in his work. “I should bind your eyes as well. I should make sure you don’t get to enjoy this, you wretch. After what you’ve done to me, you don’t deserve to.”

Loki tried to look away, or at least not stare so obviously. It was difficult, though, with Thor looming over him, panting with the effort of opening himself up. It was difficult to believe what he was seeing and what it meant. That Thor wanted him like _that_ , wanted to be taken instead of to take.

“And I don’t care that you are not he,” Thor went on, voice ragged and tense as he fingered himself, so that Loki could almost sense the stretch. “You are still Loki, still a shifty little rat, still my trickster brother. And never in all the centuries of our lives together would you set your wickedness aside, even though you wanted me as I wanted you. Your malice and your mischief were more important to you than _me_ , and you would not cease them no matter how I pleaded. And now you return, pretending to be good, after all I have suffered…”

Loki stared again, but he was given no more than a moment to process what Thor had said before Thor deigned to lean over him, hand wet with the slick remnants of the packet of lube wrapping around his cock.

He had wilted slightly from the delay, but the moment Thor touched him, he was hard as rock once more.

Thor squeezed tight enough to make him gasp, and seemed grimly pleased by that little sound of pain. And then, while shock throbbed in Loki’s blood, Thor climbed atop him, thighs straddling Loki’s hips, hand never releasing his cock but only guiding it where he wanted it, slowly sinking down upon it.

The feel of Thor shifting and clenching around Loki’s virginal flesh was almost too much. Loki could nearly have come right then as Thor adjusted to being filled, breathing in unsteady gasps, until his full weight was rested in Loki’s lap.

“So this is what you always denied me,” Thor mused, a low rumble deep in his chest.

Thor took what he wanted, starting with slow, experimental motions, lifting himself up on his muscular thighs and then sliding back down. Arching to impale himself more effectively, eyes falling shut beneath a furrowed brow as he found his rhythm, a moan escaping as he found the right angle. 

And, bound as he was, there was nothing Loki could do but lie there and take it, trying to hold himself back, mad thoughts flickering through his head, like the strange surprise at how confidently Thor moved as he rode him, and how much he would have given to be able to lean up and suck on the tight little nipples on Thor’s broad chest.

Had Thor really wanted him, long ago? Had he, and Loki's old self never knew it? Had Thor thought he did? 

When Loki whimpered, Thor's eyes snapped open and locked on his. 

“I loathe you,” Thor snarled, hand suddenly on his throat in something that was not the brotherly grip that Loki had felt so many times, and it tightened as Thor began to move faster.

“I loathe you for spurning me, for tormenting me, for fighting me and stabbing me and every wretched thing you have ever done. I would have ended your miserable life myself long ago if I had not been cursed with this unnatural desire for you. But maybe now it will stop.”

By the time Loki realized that he truly could not breathe, his head was already light.

Loki hadn’t been afraid earlier, when they’d fought—or, rather, when Thor had beat him silly and he’d refused to fight back. He’d been aware that Thor was dangerous—Thor had always been dangerous, even when he was good—but he hadn’t truly been _afraid_. He’d been too full of hope for that, thinking of himself as the hero at last, determined to endure in the hopes of getting through to Thor, determined to succeed where Thor had always failed with him, believing that in the end everyone would know how noble he had been, how well he had done in saving his brother. In the end, Thor would thank him. Thor would love him. Everything would be sunshine and flowers and puppies, and they would be happy together, both heroes in a kindly world.

A lump formed in Loki’s throat as he thought of it now, just beneath the clench of his brother’s fist, as his vision dimmed and narrowed. His limbs yanked against the bonds, struggling instinctively, but Thor was strong and angry and it would not be enough.

Thor pressed down on his throat, growling, as he rode harder, taking advantage of Loki’s squirming for his own pleasure, and Loki was faintly aware of Thor’s other hand moving between them as he stroked himself.

Loki's eyes stung with tears. He was desperate for air, blood throbbing with the pulse that burned painful and urgent in his head and chest, cock swelling in time with it as Thor rode him, and it felt far too good to be the last thing he would feel. But any moment he would spill inside his brother, and he doubted he would be conscious afterward.

His body gave one last burst of panicked strength, bucking hard right before he came, and he heard Thor’s startled shout. Felt him clenching inside, felt the cool wetness of semen striping across his chest. Felt himself starting to fade out, stars dancing before his eyes.

Then abruptly the hand on his throat let go and air rushed back into Loki’s gasping lungs.

When Loki came back to his senses, Thor was clambering off to stand over him, eyeing his sweaty, limp body with distaste. Then, as if coming to a decision, Thor turned his back, swept up his clothes in one hand, and he strode off to the bathroom.

A few minutes of sounds of running water later, he reemerged, dressed and put together again. And still scowling.

“Now leave me alone, little shadow. I’m off to enjoy myself more in this city of the unworthy, and I would prefer to do so without your vile company.”

Loki lay there blinking, and Thor was halfway to the door before he managed to make a sound of distress from behind the gag.

Thor stopped and looked back only briefly. “I’m sure you don’t need my help getting free,” he said. “You never have before.”

And then the door slammed.

Thor wasn’t entirely correct, but Loki did manage to narrowly avoid becoming a scandal. (Though with some of the things he was god of, “found naked, bruised, and tied to a bed in Las Vegas” would hardly have been all that surprising.) He got loose eventually and between the bed sheets and the torn remnants of his clothes managed to become decent enough to sneak out, shaken but quickly recovering, and was spotted only by a pair of cleaning ladies who had almost certainly seen worse.

Once Loki made it home and showered, put on comfortable clothes and plopped himself down on the couch, he began to feel much better. Not because everything was all right, but because it _would_ be. Thor was a villain for now, and hated him, but Loki was living proof that people could change. 

And if it was true that Thor had already desired him, then maybe there was really hope for what he never thought he'd get. 

***

Next: The Return of the King (King Loki, that is)


	2. Overwriting the Page as a Means of Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor has just learned the truth about the former Agent of Asgard and what really happened to Kid Loki. But after dragging the murderer back to Asgard for judgment, Thor goes home only to find himself face to face with... Loki?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This part takes place immediately after Loki: Agent of Asgard #10)
> 
> Also, please make sure you've noticed the archive warnings. King Loki is pretty awful in this part.

Thor recognized the specter before him at once, and part of the problem was that for an instant he believed that was what he saw.

He was just returned from Midgard. In the hour since he had knocked upon the door to his brother’s dwelling on Midgard he had heard words spoken that he had never wanted to hear. He’d heard the tale of the theft of his reborn brother’s flesh by the ghost of the former Loki, and he’d dragged the murderer back to Asgard and turned away when he could bear not a single moment more in his hateful presence as he pleaded and begged, crimes exposed and only then feigning remorse.

And now what greeted him when he returned to his chambers looked in every detail like the old Loki from years before. The dead Loki.

So Thor stopped short, staring at the figure and wondering whether it was ghost or illusion or perhaps the result of some spell. Even when the villain—leaning against Thor’s desk, inspecting black fingernails—glanced up at him with a toothy grin, Thor’s shock and confusion still reigned.

If he had only thought to act instead of gaping, things might have gone differently from there. If he had only still been worthy of Mjolnir, it almost certainly would have changed the outcome.

“Hello, brother,” Loki sneered, gesturing with that same black-nailed hand. At the motion, the chamber around them shifted and faded like a space within a dream, becoming a dim dungeon, dark and shadowy and filled with sounds of dripping water and creaking metal.

“Loki!” Thor shouted, moving into a defensive stance on instinct. But he was weaponless, caught unprepared. And then the fight was over before it started as chains shimmering silently into existence around his limbs.

Thor yelled and yanked against against them for a moment before the creeping laughter got to him.

“Oh, Thor, Thor,” said the figure in the shadows nearby. “It’s been a long time since you were so easy to catch—it must be the lack of the hammer. Go on and struggle some more. I’ve missed it.”

“Whatever you are, whatever game this is,” Thor growled, “I am not playing. Release me now or I will…”

The villain only shook his head with a _tsk_. “ _What_ I am? Didn’t he tell you about me? Eh, well. I suppose it’s understandable. You hardly gave him the chance to explain anything once you knew what he’d done, did you? That’s all right, though. He hasn’t quite got it through his foolish little head yet that you always listen better when you are a _captive audience_ , as they say.”

Loki strolled nearer, and Thor narrowed his eyes.

“But now that I have you here, you and I can have a nice private conversation.” The villain insinuated his way to Thor’s side and leaned close, near enough for Thor to feel his breath, light glinting off the points of his teeth. “I thought it was time for me to introduce myself. I’ve come for a little visit from many thousands of years hence, just to give you a preview, because you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other. You see, I’m his future. I’m what he becomes.”

Thor got the impression that he was expected to be shocked. “Lies,” he snapped. “Why should I believe you?”

It did look like Loki—only now that Thor saw him closer, he did not look precisely like the one Thor had watched die during the siege upon Midgard. He was older, face etched with fine lines; rangier, an old lone wolf made of nothing but sinew and bone.

That, though, was less proof than the feel of him, familiar in a way that now made Thor recoil. And the fact that Loki noticed and seemed to relish it.

In answer, though, the villain tilted his head aside and tapped a finger against his lips. “Mm. You shattered the sword, so that does make proof a bit more difficult, admittedly. But I am he. The real question is why you would doubt it.”

“Why indeed would I doubt the word of one who has attacked me by surprise and put me in chains.”

The villain looked at him and then lifted his hands. “Fine! Brother, you are so very intelligent. This is nothing at all like what a _squatter in your brother’s stolen corpse_ would do, is it? Don’t believe me, then. It’ll be your loss.”

Thor could only stare as… as the villain who might well be Loki folded his arms across his chest and turned away, pacing a few irritable steps and then returning.

“Or perhaps it would help convince you if I were to tell you something only he would know. You said he was always _scheming and sneering and laughing_ , if I remember, but do you want to know what that little snake is doing right at this moment?” Without waiting for a reply, this older Loki put his fists to his eyes and feigned a sob. “‘ _Boo hoo! I thought I had a chance with Thor, and now he’s turned his back on me, oh poor me, oh poor Loki! Boo hoo!_ ’”

Dread welled up in Thor for the first time. “You mock.”

The villain shook his head and spread his hands with a wry grin. “Nothing but the truth. The kid’s all broken up now because you got his hopes up by practically throwing yourself at him while you were, hm, _even unworthier_.”

If this Loki knew…

Thor doubted Loki would have told anyone what had happened in Las Vegas. _He_  certainly had not, the incident an itch under his skin turning into horrified shame when the inversion ended and he recalled what he had done under its influence. When he recalled beating his brother on the street and then his own maddened, sweaty scramble to take what he had so long craved, despite Loki’s attempt to refuse him. Brutalizing him in his vengeance. And it did not matter that Loki had clearly felt pleasure from it. The knowledge that such acts lurked within him had made him shudder.

Then finally this day he had resolved to visit his brother at last, to speak of those events and to apologize, to offer amends.

But then he had learned the truth instead.

Now this older Loki was stroking a hand through his hair, carelessly yanking out a few strands whenever his fingers caught.

“Just think of that,” Loki said. “You found out he’s a lying murderer, and he’s sobbing his eyes out because he _really hoped_ you’d come back for another dicking. Precious, isn’t it?”

Thor clenched his jaw tight, resisting the urge to scream, resisting the urge to try to yank away. “If you are him, then the same is true of you.”

Loki snorted. “If you notice, I’m not crying. By my time you and I are far beyond that, and it’s hard to believe I was ever so naive. But you’re right that I do still want another go. So what’s that wonderful cliché? Ah yes: I think you’re a bit overdressed.”

With a menacing snap of Loki’s fingers and a sensation like spiderwebs breaking on his skin, Thor’s clothing and armor vanished, leaving him bare. In the next moment, the shadows around him shifted, reforming into a great dark seat, and Loki was shoving him towards it.

He tried to struggle, but this Loki from the far future was stronger than he expected, stronger than should have been possible, knew all Thor’s defenses and had learned to get around them, and implacable fingers wrenched Thor’s wrists up to the small of his back as he forced him down to his knees. Thor roared, but that only inspired Loki to yank them higher until his shoulder joints creaked and he had no choice but to bend.

“Come now, Thor. Stop being such a priss,” Loki said as he held him there easily. Thor could hear the clink of metal as Loki fastened the chains to pin him. “After last time, we both know you’re not too good to get fucked against your brother’s throne.”

Thor had already been angry, but at the feel of cold hands dragging down his back, it became a sour taste in the back of his throat.

He believed it now. He believed this was indeed the fate of the murderer. It made sense that they were one and the same.

“Do not call me that,” he gritted out. “You are no kin of mine.”

“I’ll call you what I like, _brother_ , just as I’ll do what I like to you.”

The taunt was followed by Loki pulling away, a soft rustling, the clicking of buckles and armor falling to the floor, and then the sensation of a naked body coming to cleave to his back, cool dry skin against him.

This was familiar as well, from long ago—a slighter body touching him, but with such wiry strength within it.

Thor did his best to ignore it all, to give Loki no satisfaction. Unfortunately, Loki took that as a challenge.

“Ever since you finally snapped, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, you know,” he said with a voice like oil, nipping softly at Thor’s neck, drawing from him an unwilling shiver. “All those centuries of you pretending to be virtuous, while really you probably spent your nights tugging yourself off, fantasizing about having your little brother reaming you, _if only_ he were good enough to deserve your perfect golden ass.” His nails raked down Thor’s body, drawing painful, stinging lines along Thor’s ribs, trailing down toward his thighs. He laughed, harsh and dissonant in Thor’s ears. “Oh, the mental image! Oh, how _hard_ it must have been for you!”

When Thor said nothing, Loki’s hand rose to tangle in his hair, wrenching his head back.

“I have something _just as hard_ for you now, my dear little prince,” he snarled.

And then Thor felt the tip of Loki’s erection pressing between his cheeks, lining up, the only slickness upon it that which seeped from the tip.

Thor’s eyes went wide. “Damn you, Loki! You would not—”

His words turned into a bitten-off cry of pain as Loki stabbed suddenly inside.

“Sorry,” Loki chuckled, breathless. “Naughty me. I already did.”

The sensation was shocking, blinding, almost paralyzing, and Thor for a moment could only lie there, chest pressed against the cold, hard surface beneath him, shuddering as Loki worked deeper into him in increments, pulling out, shoving in again.

He did so with obvious pleasure, with slow, savoring strokes. “To think… my younger self got you for our first time,” he panted. “So impolite. It really should have been age before beauty.”

But despite the pace it was relentless, the stiff rod within dragging at Thor's flesh, and his body twitched all over with the desire to try to fight or escape. It was all he could do to keep a hold on himself, to stay still and silent, lips sealed and teeth clenched so tight his jaw ached. 

The hard slap to his hip caught him unawares, and he flinched and stiffened.

“Come on, stubborn,” Loki said. “I know that hurts. Let me hear it.”

“Go to Hel,” Thor hissed.

“Touchy, touchy,” Loki said just before plunging even deeper, grinding inside him at the bottom of his stroke, and that time Thor couldn’t help a groan.  

What was worse, though, was when the pain began to taper away and the slide became easier, and Loki gave a pleased little sigh and began to go faster.

It was _not_ pleasure. The perverse dull heat that began to spread through Thor’s insides was only the result of friction and pressure and fullness, the animal rhythm of the pounding, the feel of firm hips smacking against his backside, driving into him in a way he had so long craved.

As Loki grunted and panted above him, reaching to grab him by his tensed, bunched shoulders and using the grip to force his thrusts to strike harder, Thor squeezed his eyes firmly shut and _did not_ enjoy it.

“I’m just trying to give you what you wanted, you know. You could try to be a little grateful.”

The words wrought a shivering twinge all through Thor's form. He hadn’t wanted this. Didn’t want this.

But somewhere in the past, a younger Thor was doing just what Loki had described, alone with only his hands and his desires and a growing certainty that his brother—the lover he dreamed of, the one he craved—would never relent in his wickedness, and through that young man’s head flashed the thought that if that was so, then the only way he would ever taste what he desired would be if he were taken by force, or trickery.

Somewhere in the past, Thor rode on the sheer, shameful charge of that idea as it brought him to climax within moments, practically screaming as he came with fingers stuffed inside himself and a fist tight around his cock, and then left him feeling sullied and queasy in the cold aftermath.

It had been his most terrible and most treasured fantasy ever after, the one he could not stop himself from revisiting whenever he found himself bored and lonely and stricken with longing for his brother, for what he would never have.

He would never admit to anyone that sometimes he had dreamed of losing to Loki purposefully in their battles, letting Loki defeat and capture him in the hopes that Loki would then see fit to conquer him. He would never admit that during the inversion, part of his rage at his brother had been because he had been forced to be the one to give in. He had hated Loki for never turning good enough for him to allow this—and never being wicked enough to take the choice from his hands.  

And now here he was, chains holding him down and Loki’s thrusts pushing deep within him and outrage so thick in his blood he could taste it.

He had _not_ wanted _this_.

But it still burned like a cinder within him, unquenchable and burning hotter for each rough, forceful thrust, for the feel of the little hairs of Loki’s groin rubbing against the skin of his buttocks, the feel of Loki’s hands wandering across all the tender flesh they could reach.

When Loki’s creeping hand found Thor’s cock hanging between his legs—not wholly erect but heavy and heated and thickened—he could not help but gasp. Loki’s fingers wrapped around him, spiderlike, black fingernails digging painfully into the soft skin of his balls, and Norns help him, he almost hoped Loki would stroke him, to tip the balance of this from misery to pleasure.

When Loki actually did, pushing into him at the same time as he gripped Thor's cock and tugged, Thor moaned.

Then Loki spoke again.

“You do realize you’re letting your cock get hard from being fucked by the man who murdered your dear, innocent little brother, right, Thor? The brother you actually loved?”

Thor hated him, and he told him so, several times, snarling and cursing him over the hum of his enraged blood in his veins. When he ran out of curses, he fell silent to the sound of Loki chuckling again right by his ear, thrusts slowing as he pressed his nose against Thor’s hair and inhaled, sniffing him as if he were a fine wine or a flower.

“Oh, Thor. It’s been years since it was so easy to get a rise out of you. But take heart—we’re almost done. Do you want me to get you off too?”

“I want you to take these chains off me so I can kill you with my bare hands.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t offer,” Loki replied, and the claw of a hand at last withdrew from around his cock.

Instead Loki gripped his hips and pulled him backward.

Thor gritted his teeth and winced against the pain and pleasure of each stroke, skin slapping on skin, Loki’s balls against his. He gritted his teeth as Loki’s thrusts became erratic and his breathing heavier, until at last Loki plunged deep and held there, and the only sound Thor made was a groan at the unpleasant throb within him that meant the murderer had finally finished.

Then Loki was a clammy weight sprawled atop him, nibbling a few kisses on Thor’s nape as his softening prick slid out, leaving only an ache and a cold dribble of wetness behind.

“Well, that was lovely.”

Thor was about to snap back at him when the room shifted around him once more. The chains and the dim dungeon furnishings were gone, and Thor was standing naked in his own chamber, clothing folded neatly on the bed beside him, his body stinging where it had been abused. Loki’s semen still dripping from him.

He called out his name in rage, though he already knew Loki had gone and there would be no answer.

There was, however, a note left on the pillow.

“Be seeing you again soon. Love and kisses, Loki.”

Thor tore the piece of paper to shreds and headed toward his bathing chamber to wash the filth away.

His mind was empty as he bathed, rinsing off the soap twice under the shower before filling the bath and sprawling in it until the heat of rage went cold. His muscles were tense as he shifted and felt the red welts left by Loki’s nails all up and down his back, still painful and raw.

He had been a fool to forgive so often. He had been a fool to continue to love Loki past the point when sense should have turned away. Most of all, he had been a fool to hold out his secret hope for so long, to cling to it even when it had grown twisted, making him want… the things he had wanted. The thought now made his stomach churn.

Eventually he stood up from the water, dripping from the sullen tips of his hair, and stepped out, rubbing himself down with a towel. By then his wounds had begun to heal, and by the time he was lying dry and silent on his bed they were little more than scars.

So this was what he had to look forward to, for the rest of time.

But at least there would be no hope again, and no forgiveness—and not because this violation had been so unforgivable. Instead because it was nothing at all. It was nothing in comparison what Loki had already done, and it did not matter, because the brother he had loved was dead and would never return.

***

  
Next: More truths, more consequences


	3. Pentimento of Scribes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disowned by Thor, shunned by Asgard, and banished by the All-Mother, with his best friend no longer speaking to him and his apartment a complete wreck after Thor smashed up the place in rage and threw him out the window, Loki thinks about how it came to this. Elsewhere, though, Thor is thinking too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part takes place during approximately the timeframe of L:AoA #11 but diverges somewhat. 
> 
> See those heavy angst and feels tags? Aaaaah, here we are.

As he tried to put the pieces of his life back together, Loki found himself thinking about memory. About the memories he had and the ones he shouldn’t have.

Memories of his child self, the one he had murdered, fell into the latter category.

He sometimes had vague memories of that time, before he took over this body in his dirtiest trick, and he knew he shouldn’t. Memories of being Ikol and watching him, advising him, manipulating him—those made sense. But he had not been that boy, and somehow, sometimes, he remembered anyway.

He suspected it was physiology. Neurons, brain chemistry, the same reason he hadn’t needed to relearn how to walk or talk or ride a bicycle when he was “born” into this body. But that made it no less unsettling, no less like being haunted.

_“He’ll take care of you, Loki. He loves you.”_

The voice echoed in his memories though he could not recall whose voice it was, only that he had believed them. It was the truth his child self had needed to believe, the thing that made everything worth it.

And now he remembered it as he wept alone in his apartment on Midgard. Where he had wound up after being judged and shunned and banished, even his mother hating him and vowing that he would never be allowed to return home.

He remembered the feeling of being certain that Thor loved him, and that made it all worse.

Thor had loved the _child Loki_ , the reborn innocent, the good trickster hero who had sacrificed himself for everyone. And Thor had loved the Loki that he had grown up with as well, even after they’d been enemies for years. But Loki was neither of them. He was just the echo, the cheap imitation, the murder weapon. And no matter how he changed, no matter what he did or how good he strove to be, it would not be enough.

Thor could never love _him_.

And now his only friend had abandoned him also. And Asgard had disowned him as if he’d never existed. And his apartment was a shambles.

He was doing so well in his stolen life, wasn’t he?

He spent a good hour wallowing in self-pity before sighing, scrubbing a hand across his face, kicking himself off the ruin of the couch, and starting to stuff trash into bags, sorting through the wreckage for what might be salvageable.

He could have done this with magic, but he needed busy work to keep him from slipping back into abject misery. He was weak and shaky, in a way he’d never felt before, as he tied off the tops of each black plastic bag. Every step felt like he was dragging the whole realm behind him. He could manage to appear normal enough as he lugged the bulging trash bags out to the chute, face blank and eyes empty in case he happened to cross paths with a neighbor, but by the time he returned to his own apartment he was so exhausted he would have to stop with his back to the door, gasping in air and fighting the urge to cry.

His chest felt hollow, and it hurt. And then he would blink away the blurriness from his eyes as he started cleaning anew, collecting half-seen fragments from the floor.

The task went faster after he decided to simply shove it all in the bags, because none of it, nothing broken, was worth trying to save.

He deserved this.

He should have known when he first took over this life and started trying to lie and cheat his way to what he wanted that he would inevitably lose anything he gained. He’d wanted to believe that he’d done all of it for a reason—that at least his old self and his child self had died so that he could fix everything now—but maybe that had been nothing more than excuses, lies he wanted to believe.

When the guilt had first started to trouble him (he’d barely recognized the feeling at first; it had taken a particularly over-the-top manifestation to make him realize) he’d vowed to _live with it_. To let it make him better, let it drive him, until he really had changed. Until he’d become the person he should have been. The one Thor would have loved.

He should have known that could never happen.

It was an hour till dawn before his apartment was clean, but it turned out not very much had been salvageable: the place looked like it had been razed. Just four plain walls and a very battered couch, and empty night through the windows.

With a deep and troubled sigh Loki lay down upon it and shut his eyes and tried not to remember anything at all.

*

Thor groaned into his hands, feeling doubt for the first time since it had happened and hating it.

That morning, the dawn had come unwelcome. After a restless and uneasy sleep, a shallow sleep in which wisps of nightmares curled clawed hands around his limbs, his eyes had snapped open at the very first light, wakefulness coming upon him at once.

With it memory. With it rage.

The earliest rays found him burying Jarnbjorn deep into the wood of a target until splinters flew, and thinking how much easier it was to find an outlet for his anger when the hammer and the storm still answered him. Yet he made do, near wishing for some unfortunate enemy to unwisely choose this moment.

What he got instead was onlookers, Sif and Volstagg joining him on the field.

He stopped only when the sweat was pouring from his brow, though, the bitter betrayal at all the things Loki had done and all the things he would yet do still burning like poison within him.  

“What became of the murderer under the judgment of Asgard?” Thor asked when his friends seemed reluctant to break the silence—or perhaps hesitant to voice the obvious concern.

It was Volstagg who told him, heaving a sigh.

“His head remains on his neck; the All-Mother banished him. I’ve not heard where he ended up, but at least it is not here.”

Thor’s jaw clenched tight, muscles tensing, and something within him answered that it was not enough. Banishment was nowhere near enough.

“I still can barely believe that such foulness is possible. That even _he_ could have committed such a crime,” the big man added, shaking his head sadly. “Your brother will be sorely missed, my friend.”

“Yes, he will,” Thor answered.

But he had not yet begun to grieve. The wound was still too fresh, the anger too blinding. Everything the villainous future Loki had done to him and all the things he’d said of what was to come... and the murderer—the younger one, the one who would grow into that—was somewhere out in the world, unfairly free, unfairly alive.

Thor imagined him laughing at the ruin he had wrought and the pain he had caused, and his hands clenched into fists involuntarily.

Several hours later, exhausted finally, he sat beside Sif in the shade.

“I wish I’d had the strength. The will,” he said, largely speaking aloud to himself, but certain that if any would understand the depth of his anger toward Loki, it would be her.

Sif glanced at him, expression unreadable. “Do you?”

“Aye.”

There was a tension in the air as Sif did not respond.

Uneasily, Thor continued. “Do you not?”

And he watched as his friend—never known to dissemble, always one to speak her mind swift and direct—looked away toward the sky, fingers toying with the pommel of her sword in her lap. “No. I’m glad you didn’t.”

A sudden burst of anger. “Why? He is the killer of our Loki. He admitted it to me himself, and he is under a compulsion to neither lie nor conceal the truth. He _murdered my brother_. Nothing can excuse that.”

Sif met his gaze, and her mouth twisted. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

Thor waited. “Yes?”

“Everything you’ve said is true. What he did cannot be excused, and you are well within your rights not to forgive him,” she said. “I’m not sure I would, in your place. Yet he seems different to me than he was before, and I am glad his punishment was nothing that cannot be undone. He claimed to be remorseful, and for the first time in our lives, I believed him.”

Thor took this in, scowling, his uneasiness growing. “So you believe then that we have all answered his crime unjustly.”

“No, I don’t believe that either,” Sif sighed. “But I do misgive what good it will do, this banishment, if he truly was trying to make amends.”

“He was _not_. He was concealing his crime, lying to us all. He was making nothing right. He was only covering it up.”

But Sif only shrugged. “I did say trying, not succeeding.”

Thor found himself thinking of her words long after. And that night, brooding alone, he considered them in relation to the truth only he and Loki knew.

He had, until that moment, been too enraged to ask himself what had turned the Loki of this time into that vicious, hateful creature of the far future; he had walked away hearing the younger one’s pathetic, whining claims that he only sought to change, and then he had been confronted with the proof of how _changed_ he would one day be. There had seemed nothing to question.

But now he wondered.

If Sif was right and Loki truly was not the same as his former evil self—if he had truly been seeking to become better, no matter how imperfect the attempt—then what would happen to strike him from that path?

Then he thought of Loki shunned and cast out, alone where his thoughts might began to twist as they had always done, thinking himself mistreated. And he began to misgive it also.

And for that matter, why had this future Loki revealed himself at all?

Part of Thor’s mind had a swift answer—he had come to defile his once-brother, merely because he could, because in this time he had the upper hand—yet it seemed oddly inadequate. It had been senseless cruelty. Loki had bragged of his future evils, taunted Thor, violated him in what was surely the worst manner he could devise, mocked him...

It was just precisely as if Loki had meant him to think no deeper on it than that. As if he meant to cloud Thor’s judgment with rage, to madden him until he could see no further, until he would listen to no plea and consider no mercy.

Thor thought on it, growing more and more unsettled, until all that was left was a cloud of doubts.

He doubted, and hated it. Hating Loki had been far easier, feeling nothing but rage for him and knowing at least that it was over, the bonds of love and kinship severed at last, no more to trouble him.

But Thor had never made his choices by what was easiest. Doubt had been planted, and now he needed answers. And he knew where he must go to get them.

*

In Loki’s dream, he was being punished.

He had been locked in a room—not a dungeon cell like any in Asgard, just a bare room with white walls and a shabby couch in the center as the only furnishings. A room with no windows or doors, and when he was placed inside, he was told that the purpose of it was that he would have to learn to live with himself. _That_ was his punishment, they told him: he would live out the rest of his years in solitude, thinking on his guilt and all that he had done.

They had not mentioned the thundering. It had not been there at first, but after a while he’d heard it. He’d been sitting on the couch, head buried in his arms, and he’d heard it—faintly, a deep rumble that seemed to come from everywhere. As days passed it began to grow louder. Sometimes it sounded like footsteps drumming on the ceiling, as if this room were buried in the ground under Asgard and every day people would walk over him, uncaring, not knowing he was there. Other times it sounded like someone beating on the walls, determined not to let him sleep or rest, coming at odd intervals and shattering his calm each time, until he was a wreck of nerves, shouting back for whoever it was to stop, to leave him be. Not much after that it became ceaseless, an endless roll of thunder, and he knew then that it was Thor, Thor punishing him.

He called out his brother’s name, said he was sorry, begged Thor for forgiveness. And at first he thought Thor did not hear him, but after a while it became clear that the thunder grew louder every time he spoke. Answering him. _Refusing him_.

He begged Thor to forgive him and Thor didn’t care.

In the end Loki crumpled onto the floor on his knees and wept and pleaded for it to end and then there came a far louder clap of thunder—

“AH!” Loki screamed, waking up at last to the sound of someone pounding on his door, and promptly falling off the couch.

It took him perhaps another half a minute to sort out his ass from his elbows while the thumping continued, still half asleep and with the distress of the dream lingering in his racing heart, and then a few seconds more to pick himself up and brush his hair out of his face with his fingers, though there was nothing to be done about the dishevelled, slept-in clothing or the damp redness of his eyes. On any other day he might not have answered the door looking like that, but today it seemed he lacked the requisite pride to care. And anyone who was bothering him maybe deserved to know just what a walking disaster he was.

When he finally managed to shuffle to the door and pull it open, though, he changed his mind completely.

“Thor,” he croaked, throat tightening at the sight of the thunder god darkening his doorway.

Thor, who had thrown Loki out the window the last time he’d been in this room, who wanted him dead, who hated him and wanted to see him rot. Thor, who had said Loki would never see him again. Standing in Loki’s doorway.

“Loki,” Thor said, wary, gaze traveling up and down his form and past him into the empty apartment before flickering back to his face. “Understand me: I do not wish to be here. I did not wish to see you. But we must talk. Let me come in.”

Dumbly, Loki nodded and stepped back to let him pass.

This could not bode well.

With a fluttering twinge in his stomach he followed Thor’s steps back into the barren living room and watched as he stood in the center of it, an imposing, thunderous figure squinting around at the empty space with disdain. As always, Thor was too big for Midgard. Too godly. Loki suddenly felt acutely ashamed, and he gave a weak laugh.

“Have a seat,” he said. “The couch is the only thing that survived, really, and that only barely. I’d offer you something to drink, but I’m afraid I’m out of… everything.”

Thor stayed as far to one side of the cushions as possible and eyed Loki fiercely when he sat down—faintly trembling—at the opposite end.

“So what did you want to talk about? Because I—”

“I need you to tell me the rest,” Thor demanded.

Loki blinked and stopped short. “The rest of what?”

“Everything that has happened that you have concealed from me. And if you ever want me to believe your words again, you will tell me everything.”

Thor’s eyes were cold and hard.

Loki had a momentary, visceral memory—the child Loki’s life intruding briefly upon his—of needing Thor to believe in him, of being willing to do anything at all so that his brother, his amazing, golden, godly brother, would not be disappointed.

And now Thor wanted to know everything.

But there was so much of _everything_ to tell. And so much of it that he had never wanted Thor to hear.

As if reading his thoughts, Thor added, “Begin with the visitor who came to me yesterday after we parted.”

“A visitor?” Loki said, feeling himself blanch, because the god of lies is a creature of story, and he could guess where this one was going. “Would this visitor perhaps have resembled me?”

Thor nodded. “He did. And he made many claims that I would hear from your mouth.”

Oh, no. Oh, no no no.

Loki curled around himself. “I’m guessing he didn’t make a good first impression.”

The only answer Thor gave was a snort.

Loki saw no way out of it. So he took one last deep breath and confessed all, from the start to the end.

When he was done, silence fell. Throughout the tale Loki had been constantly aware of Thor’s shape, a still shadow of judgment in his peripheral vision, but he had not yet looked up to see what effect his words had wrought.

“Is that all of it?” Thor asked after a minute in which the last traces of the sound of Loki’s confession seemed to absorb into the very walls.

Loki considered this. The jar in which he’d trapped the venomous foulness that had poured out when he stabbed Thor with Gram what seemed half a lifetime ago—what the older Loki had told him, and everything he’d done as he raged against that fate, lying to his friends and tricking his allies—the moment when he’d thought he’d won and how good it had felt to smash Thor into the lunar dirt with his own hammer…

“Everything I can remember,” he said, still speaking to the floor.

“So it was no lie,” Thor answered at last. “He told me much the same, and I had _hoped_ this time to find it is some trick, for if his words were proved false then perhaps his predictions would be as well. It seems not."

How very final. And if that was what Thor had wanted to know, then undoubtedly it would be.

"Yet his actions…” Thor continued, trailing off into silence, and something in his voice gave Loki pause.

“What did he do?”

Thor told him, and Loki listened, flinching at each word, heart aching.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.  

Thor shrugged. “It was not your doing.”

“If he’s right,” Loki said grimly, “then it will be. Someday.”

“And yet you say you were trying to thwart him," Thor answered with a sardonic edge to his voice that Loki was unused to hearing there, one that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

And Thor was right.

"I was. I am. I don't _want_ to become like that. But I already knew I was in a cage. Maybe I really can't ever escape it. Everything I’ve done to fight him has just played into his hand, and that he's here at all... maybe I can't."

“I have wondered the same," Thor said. "But I have also thought of _why_ he is here. From what you have told me, and from what I have seen, it seems he very much wants me to hate you.”

Loki could not help but look up then, but this time it was Thor who averted his gaze almost at once.

“Do not mistake me. I am here because I do not wish to play into his hand, no matter how I feel about you.”

“So in fact you do hate me but you’ve decided it’s a bad idea to act like it?”

Thor’s eyes flickered briefly to him. The wary determination in them had not changed. Neither had the distance. “I… I am trying not to wish you ill. If my hatred is what dooms you… if that is what dooms us both and causes all the misery that you would bring... I would not have that on my head.”

Before that moment, Loki would have doubted that anything could be more painful than watching as Thor denounced and disowned him and threw him to the somewhat metaphorical wolves of Asgard.

But this was worse, and he put his hands to his face as he breathed.

He had memories, like a silent film, of his old self meticulously arranging his own death, counting on Thor to somehow bring him back. He’d counted on Thor to need his presence, after years of being at each other’s throats.

But now Thor no longer cared. Now Thor could look at him, earnestly and truly, and suggest that he was only a vessel of a fate to be averted. That he mattered as nothing more than that. And that Thor would _endure_ pretending not to loathe him only as a means to save the rest of the realms.  

He remembered the thunder in his dream.

“Maybe you should go,” he said, once he thought his voice would be strong enough not to break. “I promise I won’t turn evil tonight while you’re not looking.”

An exasperated sigh came from beside him. “Loki.”

“What?”

“I said I do not wish to play into his hand. I am trying not to hate you. So we should talk, so that perhaps I can begin to understand.”

For an instant, the surreality of the scene impressed itself upon Loki—that he was sitting on the other side of a battered couch in his hollowed-out apartment, with Thor hunched over beside him suggesting, no doubt for the first time in their lives, that they sit down and talk through their difficulties.

He almost had to smile. Would have, if the task before him hadn’t seemed so hopeless.

“I’m not sure what I could say that would make any difference,” Loki admitted. “I’ve already told you everything.”

“Nay, you have not.”

Loki looked at him in confusion.

“You have not told me what you truly are,” Thor said. “You claim you came from an echo. A ghost. A copy. You said you are not responsible for my brother’s murder because you were but the weapon, not the hand that wielded it. But a weapon bears no guilt because it has no _will_. So is that—are you just the echo of dead whims, with no wit of your own, doing solely as you were made to do?”

There was faint disgust tingeing Thor’s voice, as if he were describing the jerking marionette limbs of a spider as it moved by instinct and reaction, and Loki felt ill at the thought.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He could never be a mindless puppet.

“So did you _want_ to do it?” Thor asked.

Loki wished he were still capable of lying. His voice, when it came at all, was only a whisper.

“Yes. I did. I wanted to live. I wanted to be _me_. I wanted to be Loki again.”

He could hear Thor’s harsh, uneven breathing, and he could see the tension in him, hands clenching on his knees.

“So you are _him_ , then. The first Loki, the one who was raised alongside me.”

Loki shook his head even more firmly. “No, I’m not. I have his memories… I remember how he felt, what he thought, what he did. But it doesn’t feel like me. I’m not him anymore.”

Thor said nothing. Loki fumbled for words, for what to say after what he’d just confessed.

“Sometimes I also have memories from the other one, the child—”

“Do not tell me that,” Thor interrupted with a fearsome growl. “Do not _pretend_ that part of him lives on in you. Do not insult me so, when you already told me you obliterated him.”

Loki flinched. “I didn’t mean that. I was only going to say… that I know how much better he was than me. And I’m sorry.”

Thor sighed, and in the corner of his eye Loki could see his shoulders slump forward, as if he’d been carrying a great weight too long and was finally giving it up. “I have heard your apology, many times. It does not help any more now than the first time you spoke it. It does not make right what you did.”

Loki nodded, a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Thor was right, and he was not the only one who had said it, either. Freyja had accused him of empty apologies. Verity had said something along those lines, too, as she’d stormed out. They were all right, and it didn’t matter if he felt badly about what he’d done. His remorse would not bring his child self back to life. Nothing could.

He hadn’t thought about that since he’d decided he was going to be better and began trying to wipe out the memory of his past crimes, to wash the slate clean. And maybe the reason he’d avoided the thought was that the sheer futility would have stopped him before he’d even tried. If he had to fix all the wrongs he’d done in order to be good, then he truly was doomed.

So what did that leave? What more could he do than apologize for the crime that could not be undone and could not be forgiven?

Loki’s eyes had gone unfocused and now once again they brimmed, thoughts wandering down some alarmingly dark alleyways as he considered other, more thorough, more permanent means of atonement. He almost didn’t notice as Thor began to speak again.

“But it also feels strange to hear you say it,” he said. “The—I do not know what to call him. The Loki I grew up with? The first Loki?—he hardly ever apologized for anything, if he could avoid it.”

Loki gave a wan smile. “I know. He hated to. It made him feel weak, or like he was handing someone a knife to stab him with.”

Thor nodded. “Yes. He would think that.” He paused and took a breath and then another, brow knotted, shoulders rising and falling. “He… he gave me much to be angry with him for. He wronged me many times, even when we were young, and I do not think I ever wrung a true apology from his lips, until his very last words. Sometimes he would feign regret just enough to win back peace between us, others he would shrug and behave as if the deed were so small or so far past that I was being ridiculous still to dwell upon it. It mattered not if it had been an hour or a month.”

Loki remembered that. He remembered thinking Thor was being ridiculous. He stayed quiet now, discomfort sour in his belly at the memories.

“And when the situation was reversed—when I had wronged him—it mattered not how often or how earnestly I apologized. He would hold the grudge in reserve for years. For however long it suited him.”

“He thought you were lying when you said it too,” Loki answered, without thinking. “At least, mostly.”

Thor’s head rose to return his gaze. “By the time we were grown, I had accepted that as simply how he was. I ceased to expect that he might care when his mischief and tricks had harmed me, just as I later ceased to hope that he might ever mend his ways and assent to behave as my brother again rather than my enemy. I accepted his villainy. And still I loved him, enough that I could not face the years without him when he perished.”

It was someone else’s life, and it wasn’t. The spreading stain of poison and malice and creeping bitterness—he had been the one taken over by it, and he was the one sitting here listening to Thor remember, wishing he could do something to fix it, wishing he could make it not have happened that way.

“He loved you also,” he said, because that was all he could do.

Softly, Thor laughed. “Not enough.”

“More than you know,” Loki insisted. “You were the only person who really mattered to him, and he was in love with you for years before he...”

He trailed off. Thor was staring at him as if he had turned into a dragon before his eyes.

“He was not,” Thor said.

“He was. He grew up loving you, and wanting you, and wanting to have you all to himself. He just believed you were too good to ever feel the same for him.”

Thor frowned and protested. “He knew how I felt. He always… he knew me better than any other. He always told me I was incapable of deception.”

Loki only shook his head. “ _I_ didn’t know until Vegas. He had no idea. But it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? He’s gone and I’m what’s left. ”

Silence fell between them as Thor considered what he’d just heard.

When he spoke, the discomfort was clear in his voice. “I meant to say so before, when I came to visit you... but I am sorry for what I did to you as well, in Las Vegas.”

Loki answered with a shrug. “Did I look like I was complaining?”

“You said no,” Thor murmured.

“Because I thought you’d regret it. That’s all,” Loki said. “Believe me, I wasn’t refusing for my own sake.”

“I nearly killed you.”

“I deserved it, and you weren’t yourself. It’s fine.”  

Thor gazed at him curiously. “You truly are not him anymore, are you?” he mused. And somehow, in the course of their conversation, they had ceased to so vigilantly keep their distance across the couch cushions.

Loki shifted, turning and drawing his knees up beside him so that he could gaze back at his brother fully.

There was still hesitation in his eyes, their blue distant and restrained, his face solemn. But the coldness was gone, and something within Loki unclenched at the sight.

He had memories of gazing at Thor across three different lifetimes. Resentment and frustration and bitter, possessive jealousy echoed from the first Loki’s memories. What few lingering threads he retained of the child’s memory were made of nothing but adoration for his big brother.

Loki was not either one of them. He was not the victim or the one who had arranged the murder. And he was more than the murder weapon, far guiltier than that. But he was not simply the murderer.

“No, I’m not him. But I’m still Loki,” he said.  

Thor gazed back at him, searching, and Loki barely breathed as Thor’s hand lifted to touch him, brushing a few stray strands from his brow, a gesture more tender than Loki had thought he would ever receive from his brother again.

Loki loved him, loved him so much it ached.

Thor did not recoil as Loki moved closer, feeling surreal again as he shuffled on his knees until Thor was right there before him, watching his approach with calm, sad eyes. Thor didn’t push him away even when Loki dared to return the gesture, fingertips pushing through his golden hair.

They’d never kissed before. They hadn’t in Vegas—there’d been the gag in his mouth, and he doubted Thor would have anyway at that point—and certainly never before that.

But Loki ached.

So his heart pounded frantic in his chest as he leaned close and put his lips upon his brother’s for the first time.

Three frozen beats until Thor responded, lips parting with a soft, lost sound as he dragged Loki against himself, Loki at the same time moving to straddle his thighs and press their bodies together, relishing the familiar, long-missed warmth. Thor’s tongue slid against his, delving into his mouth, as if he'd been waiting for this forever.

Distantly Loki remembered his nightmare, the thunder and his loneliness and his certainty that it would be forever and all was lost. Yet now he had Thor’s arms wrapped tight around him, Thor’s hair clenched in his fingers. He could feel Thor’s breath hitch in his chest, and his own heart skipped in sympathy.

Three lifetimes he had loved Thor, and he’d never had this, and it felt like it was all he'd ever needed. All he'd been missing, in one simple action, loving Thor and feeling it reflected back. Aching with love for him, desperate, _wanting_ him and...

And then Thor pulled away with a sudden shaky breath.

“I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said miserably. “I can't do this.”

Loki stared, the ability to form words lost to him completely. But Thor’s hands were still on him, gripping onto his arms and keeping him from crumbling at the rejection, and Thor’s eyes were on him, sorrowful but forgiving.

“I don’t hate you anymore,” he went on. “I believe you—I believe you are still Loki—are still my brother, even if not the one I thought I had. But I will need time to come to grips with this. You have known for months and I have only just learned it. I will need some time before I can see you as you are and not only as the… things you have done.”

Loki nodded. He could hardly claim that was unfair, even if in this moment it made everything hurt.  

“And I will not be able to do _this_ with you until I see that you truly have changed. Until you have proved that I can trust you. Once that happens, then… if you still want to… we can try.”

Loki could almost have grinned, despite the stinging in his eyes. Thor had told him in Vegas that he’d kept his lust secret all those years because he refused to lie with a villain; he’d held out waiting for Loki to change—and the only flaw in the plan had been that Loki remained wholly unaware of his bargain.

It seemed so very Thor. No one else in all the realms could take such a noble approach to incestuous desire, and with adoration swelling in his throat Loki clasped one of Thor’s hands between his own, folding the knuckles over and putting them to his lips. “I will, brother. I promise I will.”

Thor made no answer but a curt nod.

“Do you wish me to beseech the All-Mother to allow your return to Asgard?” Thor asked a few minutes later as he readied himself to depart.

Loki declined with a shake of his head. “Maybe it’s for the best if I’m not back there for a while. And _you_ know where to find me, anyway. That’s all I really care about.”

Thor gave him a look of sympathy and the slightest hint of surprise. And then they shared a brief, awkward hug, Loki’s slighter form almost lost in Thor’s embrace.

And then Thor was gone, and Loki was alone.

He sighed, but not with any great misery. This time the razed apartment with its four white walls and the sole surviving couch did not seem so bad or so barren. He would have to do honest work to rebuild, and that was not something he, as a trickster, was used to doing. It would be hard. But he could do it. He’d certainly suffered worse.

In Las Vegas, he remembered Thor talking about the first Loki, of how he had refused to give up his mischief and villainy. He had accused Loki of having chosen those things over _him_ , and at the time Loki had wanted to protest, to tell Thor that it wasn’t true, but now he saw that didn’t matter. What was needed was more than words. He needed to prove to Thor that he would never make those old mistakes again.

He had to _show_ him that he would let nothing keep them apart this time around. Not his own damaged ego, not his miserable past, not his wretched future self.

He loved Thor so much it ached, and determination welled up to match it.

***

  
Next: No one loves you when you’re evil


	4. Or the Text Can Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Thor’s unexpected visit went unexpectedly well, Loki goes about trying to follow through on his promises. But he’s not the only one whose future is on the line, and the other Loki may have something to say about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part is set during the same timeframe as L:AoA #12 and #13 (note the expanded spoiler warnings).

It was a story of Loki.

A story of a god who twice over sacrificed himself (along with countless others) to finally have a chance to change, and found that it didn’t make any difference at all.

A story of a god who lived out that bitter truth as Asgard’s perennial villain, ever-present, ever-defeated, until the very end.

A story of a god who was trapped in a cage for aeons and finally found a way to slip through the bars.

It was a story of Loki, and Loki found a way to change it.

But he was discovering that there were some strange and unexpected things about walking back into his own tale, rewriting bits and rearranging the words and getting ink stains on his fingers. The parts where the characters got away from him, for one.

Las Vegas had been the first time he’d really noticed.

“Well, that’s not like I remember,” he mused, one eyebrow raised, as he watched from afar while Thor tied his squirming brother down on a bed in a casino hotel room. The other eyebrow joined it as Thor shoved his fingers up his own ass and started whining about centuries of frustration.

“Your own fault, you arrogant, thickheaded buffoon,” he told the shimmering image, annoyed, “given that you never bothered to mention any of this. Blaming me for not reading your mind—that isn’t really fair, you know.”

But he’d watched the rest with his hands clutching tight to the arms of his throne in the depths of Asgardia’s dungeons. He sputtered out a few curses as it went on.

His eyes went wide as an obviously pent-up Thor rode his obviously eager younger self (and oh, how amusingly brief that resistance had been), and wider as Thor put one hand to his own cock and another to the starry-eyed young hero’s throat and squeezed.

“What are you _doing_?” Loki muttered, aghast, though he wasn’t sure who this was directed at.

The Thor in his own past had never—Loki could not even imagine it, could only remember the centuries of battles and hatred, the endless acrimony. And while he knew that he had once lusted after his brother, he had left that ridiculous emotion behind ages ago, on the dustpile of everything else he’d abandoned when he finally understood the nature of his cage and who it was that held the key.

It had been so long that he didn’t recognize the uneasy, quivering tension that settled inside him as he watched Thor come all over the younger Loki’s struggling chest. He only understood that this was not the story he’d meant to tell, and he was going to have to change it.

Even after Thor left, Loki occupied himself for a good hour by re-tightening the knots with a flick of his fingers every time the little fool succeeded in loosening them, while his mind wandered and he tried to decide what to do.

If the characters were going to misbehave, then it seemed he was going to have to do a little scribbling in the margin to force them back in line.

So he’d picked the perfect moment. Arranged himself in the perfect place. Waited, buzzing with giddy anticipation, for Thor to arrive. And then, ah, the sheer thrill of so easily capturing Thor, so easily overpowering him, stealing him away and chaining him and knowing that he could do whatever he liked and Thor could not stop him.

It had been worth it for that alone, and the Thor of this time was such a tender young thing that Loki wanted to devour him.

In the midst of it all Loki began to realize he really _had_ forgotten.

He’d hated Thor for so long that he’d forgotten where it started. He’d forgotten dealing with year after year of Thor’s ambivalence, Thor eyeing him with cold reproach whenever he stayed away, rolling his shoulders as if to shrug Loki off whenever he stood too near. Forever reminding him that he was the god of lies, even when he opened his mouth to say something true. To maybe, finally, tell Thor how he felt.

And now at last he understood why. Thor had done that to him because—because—

He had never enjoyed anything more than when he shoved inside and tore from Thor’s throat a sound of pain, and he watched in fascination as the mighty Thor’s broad shoulders trembled with misery and rage, and he could have bottled that and drunk it. He’d pawed at Thor’s flesh, feeling how much Thor hated his touch, and wanted to tear him to shreds then and there.

But no. No. He wouldn’t do that, because that wasn’t part of the story. In the story he was telling, Thor _lost_ and Loki _won_.

He paused mid-stroke and took a deep, calming breath.

Thor was lucky that he had so much practice at keeping a grip on himself in the face of the extreme provocation that Thor's existence provided. Thor was lucky that he restrained himself to just a few casual taunts and such a little bit of damage.

With so much on the line, it simply wouldn’t do for him to get all emotional.

*

Two days later, upon his throne, King Loki was practically vibrating with fury.

He had been watching the whole time. He’d started out spying on his younger self’s endless pathetic wallowing, wondering whether it was time for him to make his grand entrance, whether the kid was ready to listen yet. But then Thor showed up, and Loki had found himself grinning, smirking. After what he’d done to Thor—well, there was so much he’d done to Thor, wasn’t there? From young Loki’s great crimes to his own little peccadilloes—after all of that, this was bound to be good.

Loki snickered into his hands as the sight of Thor’s barely restrained hatred and the young fool’s comical look of terror at his arrival.

He bent forward, rapt, unwilling to miss a moment of this unexpected twist.

His smile fell by increments, until at last he found himself gaping in horror at the sight of his young self leaning in for a kiss, and Thor _letting him_ , moaning into his mouth and pulling him close.

The scream of rage that erupted from Loki’s throat at that moment should have frightened entire realms. It made the shimmering green sphere of light in which he watched them shiver.

Loki had done all of this to _win_. He had done it because he had come to the end of time, with an aeon of waging endless futile battle against his brother under his belt, and it was going to end without anything changing at all. He had come back here to change the story for his own benefit, so that _Loki_ would triumph.  

He had not done it to watch as the naive little idiot spoiled all his plans by falling into Thor’s arms like a _swooning maiden_.

He had not done it so that _this_ Loki could get everything _he_ had once wanted.

Fury roared like a bonfire inside him, rising higher as he watched the two precious cooing lovebirds part their sad ways, making eyes at each other all the while.

He fumed upon his shadowy throne, conjuring small trinkets just so that he could break them, hurl them at the walls and shatter them in his rage.

He would put an end to this. This was _his_ story. It would be _his_ victory. And it was going to happen _his_ way, even if he had to burn the little wretch to cinders to do it.    

*

As Loki began the work of trying to rebuild his life and really become better this time so that he could prove it to Thor, he decided that Verity would be a good place to start. And if he succeeded, then at least he would have one friend to support him through the rest of it.

However, Verity didn’t seem to be home when he ventured down the hallway to her door.

Loki wasn’t completely sure whether she really, truly wasn’t there or if she just wasn’t answering his knock. But he had come prepared for this eventuality. He’d managed somehow to find a pad of paper and pen that had survived the destruction of his apartment, and he’d written out a note.

In it he’d explained himself, and he tried not to let it turn into excuses. He’d apologized, but he’d told her he didn’t expect that would make things better. He’d told her she was right: he had been selfish and thoughtless. He’d used her, and then he’d thrown her away. He’d been a terrible friend. He’d owned up to it all as best he could and said that if she was ever willing to give him a chance to make it up to her, he would. And then he’d folded the thing and sealed it with a puff of magic so that only she could read it, and he’d slipped it under her door, hoping it would at least be a start toward healing his mistakes.

All he could do was try, really try this time, because he owed it to the people he cared about. 

He’d started to feel a bit better about everything by the time he was heading back to his own door, so he didn’t notice the way the hairs rose on the back of his neck as he turned the knob.

As soon as he stepped inside, a claw of a hand came to rest on his shoulder.

Things happened quickly then.

Two Lokis fought, like two snakes coiling against each other, strikes too fast to track, one swift and slender green, the other dull and dark and powerful.

The younger was fueled by self-preservation, the energy of youth, sheer outrage on his own behalf and on his brother’s, the memory of Thor’s voice resonating in his bones and making him fight harder, fiercer, than he could ever remember before.

But the elder was driven by a darker malice, and the tenacity and skill of one who’d fought his way through the millennia alone. He had strength for the fight and magic to spare, the walls dimming and shifting around them as they struggled, and when the electric Midgardian lighting gave way to flicker of sconces, they were someplace else. Someplace darker and colder. And the younger Loki was caught by chains that dangled from the ceiling.

The older Loki stood over him, glaring with a fiery animosity utterly unlike his previous air of insufferable smug.

Loki glared right back. “I should kill you for what you did to Thor, you wrinkled old bastard.”

The other Loki answered with a fist to his cheekbone, hard and fast. Only then did he bother to retort.

“Kill me? I was _trying_ to give you _everything_ , you brainless little twit! What I would have given to have someone—my kindly, generous older self, maybe—tell me exactly what I needed to do in order to win! To practically hand it to me on a platter! But noooo,” he mocked, sneering. “ _You_ had to decide you knew better! _You_ had to cave in and give our self-righteous cretin of a brother exactly—what—he—wanted!”

These last words were punctuated with more strikes, each one whipping Loki’s head back and making stars burst in his vision.

Muzzy and dazed, Loki found it all made a certain kind of sense.

He remembered being fascinated when he’d first encountered this older, darker version of himself, his suspicions about the jar fulfilled. At first it had been a mystery, a knot to be untangled. He’d wanted to know what had brought him back, doubting that the answer would be a nice one but unable to keep himself from flipping the pages to find out the rest of the story. And even more compelling, there’d been the sense of inexorable recognition, memory’s opposite, its mirror image, the feeling of seeing what he might become. The feeling of someone overwriting the page yet again. He'd needed to  _know_. 

It was just his luck that it would lead to this. He always was his own worst enemy.

“—and why? What do you think you’ll get out of it? You believe that if you show Thor how _pathetically sorry_ you are, he’ll love you and forgive you and bring you roses? Maybe when the rest of Asgard still kicks you and calls you a lying murderer, he’ll let you screw his brains out sometimes, as a consolation prize!” he screamed, spittle flying. “But that’s not how it _works_. Nothing is going to change. _Loki is the god of lies_ , and even Thor, no matter what he says now or how kind you think he is, will never let you forget it! He will never let you forget that you are beneath him!”

“You’re… wrong…” Loki answered, breathless from pain and the hits he’d taken to the gut, blows that would have doubled him over if he hadn’t been chained.

And that time, when his future self struck, he felt something crack. Loki thought—rather distantly—that this was probably not a good development.  

His head lolled, too difficult to hold upright and the dizziness too great to be sure which way that was, and when next he took a breath—his ribs hurt, sending knives of agony up into his shoulders—he sputtered and almost choked on the fluid that had already pooled in his throat. And then when he spat it out, he heard something plink on the floor, and his tongue discovered the empty spot among his front teeth.

Oh.

And then there was just the sound of dripping, and the older Loki’s panting, wheezing breaths.

Loki steeled himself for more blows, but they didn’t come.

“Well, that was a bit excessive, I suppose,” the older Loki said lightly, “but it _was_ cathartic.”

Loki really hated him.

“And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I think it’s time that I tell you our story, the one you would be living if I hadn't come back to rewrite it into something better. When I finish telling you, you’ll be glad I went to all this trouble. You’ll know that I’m right.”

Loki found himself barely listening, and not just because of the distracting throb in his swollen, bruised eyebrow and the nauseating taste of blood on his tongue.

His elder self—his more powerful, more experienced self, steeped in rage and hardened by it, bitter and twisted beyond recognition—would not stop, unless Loki stopped him. So Loki would have to face himself, trickster versus trickster, and he would have to go up against him alone, with few allies and fewer friends, mistrusted and outcast. While any wrong move would be a strike against him.

But it was what he had to do, and not because he needed to prove himself or to show everyone that he had changed. It wasn’t for himself at all. It was for Thor. For what would happen if he failed, if he let that bitterness win.

He would just have to be the best trickster he could be, whatever that might mean. 

“You’re going to burn, little Loki, just like I did,” he heard dimly, as if from outside himself, his elder self’s grinning voice only a distant threat.

Maybe that was true. Perhaps he would.

Odin had told him that this would be his time of trial. Odin had said this would be his time of fire. But Loki had the one thing he needed to face the flames and walk through them: his brother was waiting for him on the other side.

He had to believe that sometimes not everything burns.

 

**Epilogue**

Thor was standing in the hallway of an apartment building in Manhattan, staring at the wall where Loki's door had been, when footsteps approached behind him.

It was not Loki, of course; he'd known it would not be. Thor’s heart dropped a little anyway.

"Miss Willis," he said.

Verity eyed him from a few paces away, wary, and didn’t return the greeting. Thor could hardly blame her; when last they’d met, Verity had seen him beating Loki to a pulp. She had even been brave enough to try to stop him, a mortal shouting back at an enraged Asgardian god to try to save her friend.

Thor met her gaze solemnly as she sized him up again now.  

After a moment, she sighed.

"I haven’t seen him. I got home to find a note slipped under my door, and I came up here the next day—not because I was ready to forgive him, but at least we could have talked about it—and... it was like this. I've been down to the building office and there was never an apartment here. Apparently."

In the empty wall before them there was no sign of a door. There was no magic involved here, no concealment, no trick. Thor could sense that. Loki’s apartment simply was not there.

"I've tried his cell phone, too, and nothing," Verity added, pushing her hair out of her face with a sound of frustration. "At this point I'm really hoping he turns up with some crazy story so I can go back to being mad at him for being a thoughtless jerk. But I'm starting to worry that he won't."

Thor frowned. “How long?”

“A week ago yesterday,” she said. Then, brows drawing together in suspicion, “Why were you looking for him?”

A week. Almost the entire time since they had parted.

A week that he had spent mourning, because that was where he needed to begin, mourning his brother who was dead.

By the third day, he had found himself mourning two of them, and missing another.

By the seventh, he’d needed to see Loki again.

"I too was ready to talk to him, even if not yet ready to forgive," Thor answered.

The mortal woman gave him a dubious look, a little uncertain. “I’m not sure what you’re lying about, but you are.”

Thor frowned. “My apologies, Verity. If there was a lie in that, I am not sure I know it. I did only come to speak with him. We met again, the day after he confessed to the both of us, and we spoke then as well. When we parted we were at peace, though not wholly reconciled.” After a moment’s pause he went on. “And I am sorry to have frightened you. Your attempt to defend him was admirable, and I am glad he has such a friend.”

Verity looked away, uncomfortable, arms folded across her middle. “Yeah, thanks. I get the impression that hanging around Loki isn’t always for the fainthearted.”

The corners of Thor’s mouth lifted, though it was too pained to be called a smile.

On the second day of his mourning, Thor had grieved for the child Loki, and he had raged, within himself, at the one who had killed him. He had wept openly and recalled to his mind every memory he could of the carefree, courageous little trickster who had made him smile, who had brightened his days, who had filled his chest with a warm, fond glow.

_My brother, as he should have been._

And then at some point he had wondered where the last true memories of that boy ceased and when the memories of the murderer in his place began.

The thought had been a knife to the gut, that he’d never known, that he had sensed no difference. And he’d raged and wept all the harder for it.

On the fourth day, he had thought of the murderer again and just for a moment he imagined what would have been if he had been able to do it. If he had been able to wreak justice upon him for what he’d done.

There would be no more Loki-of-the-future, or at least the thousands of years of hatred and ruin that he had claimed would never come to pass, whether they might have or no.

But the thought caused Thor’s heart to ache, hollowly.

Just as it did now, to find Loki unexpectedly _gone_.

“So… do you have any idea what could have happened to him?” Verity asked into the almost funereal pall that had fallen in the quiet hallway. “Did he… did he tell you anything? Does this have something to do with everything that’s been going on with him?”

Thor hesitated.

It was possible that there was some other reason behind his disappearance. Perhaps Loki had fled of his own accord and covered his steps behind him. It was even possible this was part of some scheme.

But the heaviness in the center of Thor’s being said it was not. That this was something worse, tangled in Loki-who-would-be, whose plan had perhaps been on the verge of failure the day before Loki disappeared.

Thor thought of Loki and his vengeful future self clashing in some sorcerous battle, and tried to imagine what must have happened to leave nothing behind but a bare wall.

“I am uncertain,” Thor said. “But I fear it may be bad.”

A little shudder passed through Verity’s shoulders and she bit at her lip.

“Is there anything we can do?”

If Thor’s fear was right, Loki could be anywhere. If he lived. If he still existed at all.

Thor shook his head. “I would not know where to begin.”

On the fifth day, Thor had woken from a dream in which Loki was kissing him again, waking a thousand years of dead hopes and slain dreams with warm lips sweet upon his. He had tried to put the thought aside, but all through the day it had come back to him, over and over, again and again. The look on Loki’s face as he’d crawled near, the feel of him scrambling to be nearer, to be as close as possible, bodies pressed together as if they should never be apart.

But those daydreams, like the memory they recalled, ended in the same place, with him pushing Loki away, heart pounding in his chest. He could not accept it yet. He was still grieving. He was still angry. He was not yet ready to feel anything else for him.

At the end of the sixth day, those feelings had not changed. But he could no longer deny that he was also in love with his brother, just as he had always been, and that he was almost sick with longing.

But when he had at last forced himself to return to Midgard to tell him so… he found that Loki was no longer there to hear.

“But we should have hope. My brother is resilient, and he is resourceful,” Thor added, as much for his own benefit as for Verity’s. “Whatever has happened, he will triumph. He will come back.”

“Yeah, he is, and I’m glad you really believe that,” Verity said with a quirk of a grin. “So, um, if you hear from him first, will you let me know? Or tell him to get in touch?”

Thor nodded. “Aye. If you will do likewise for me.”  

Verity nodded back at him. And then the mortal woman’s steps trailed away, leaving Thor alone in the hallway again.

Thor had to believe it.

He remembered Loki’s fervent promises. The feel of him clasping Thor’s hand between his own and kissing Thor’s fingers to seal his vow. The hopefulness in his face and the love rolling off him in waves. He remembered how his own heart ached, so near to everything he’d wanted for a thousand years.

So he had to believe he would see Loki again.

He had to believe that Loki would return, and that those things would still be true when he did.

  
***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, that's it! Thank you for reading, and especially to those who commented and left kudos or otherwise let me know you're there! Hope you liked! Feel free to say hi to me [on tumblr](http://illwynd.tumblr.com/) too. :D


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